Hobbes didn't write anything quite so... obvious, and I think we read 'leviathan' today because he makes such a clear and compelling argument against anarchy; I'm not saying it was his intent, but the leviathan can be read as tirade against Anarchy rather than a paean to tyranny. anarchy is so bad that if the only alternative is some ridiculously absolutist ruler, well, that's still better than the state of nature.
My own feeling is that his support of absolutism was mostly about how people were asked to choose sides. I think you can't understand Hobbes and his weird authoritarianism without the context of the English civil war
The West on the otherhand had that in 2008, it survived although the repurcussions are still being felt (Trump).
Can the Chinese avoid a serious recession forever? You would have to assume not, that will ultimately be the test of how well their system holds up.
China is sitting on a knife edge, I suspect. There are all manner of things than can bring it crashing down. Automation--demographic imbalance(too many men)--nuke from North Korea.
(As much as the West frets about North Korean nukes--practically all the major Chinese cities are closer. Can you imagine if North Korea nuked a Chinese city?)
The problem is what will happen as the dinosaur falls. Dinosaurs can take a long time to die and cause a lot of damage while doing so.
That is not just China though.
Since 2008 the entire world is following the same interventionist policies.
Trump is hardly the repercussions though, and the West has hardly survived in the sense of "overcoming" the recession.
Trump is a result of (and a reaction of the people to) the recession, and the recession (jobs lost, dwindling middle class, etc) still holds, even though figures paint a rosy pictures and those outside the affected masses hardly know better.
If the people of the PRC are not permitted to speak freely, then it is all the more important that the rest of us do. You are as entitled to criticize the government of the PRC as you are of any Western government. Therefore let us speak plainly to the matter at hand; let us not evade the issue by pretending we, as human beings, have neither the wit nor the right to look and judge; let us not be so naive as to think that an increasingly authoritarian and chauvinistic China does not affect the rest of the world.
Let me put it this way. If Microsoft wants you to believe that they are no longer evil, they have to do more than simply having the latest CEO proclaim "I am not Bill Gates and what he did was not what I did".
On the other hand, if you're somebody like Chomsky, i.e. also see your own government for what it is and criticize its problems, then your arguments can be as fair and unbiased as possible. That is to say, they do not inherently have double standards or want to actually advance the interests of western countries, while trying to restrict the rise of China. You actually think in terms of the Chinese populace.
Unfortunately, it has become very hard to tell these things apart, i.e. a normal American probably gets a lot of their information from the mainstream media that they read every day, after all. Therefore it's very hard for their criticism to not be tainted by the hidden agenda propagated by the media. That is a big problem.
There is a very simple answer to that: because you won't sound convincing to the other side.
I agree with you from a moral point of view: just because your side did something wrong doesn't mean you can't criticize the wrongs of the other side. But from a practical point of view, your side probably already agrees with you, and the other side will just ignore you.
Also, some European countries do have better democracies than the US. It horrifies me that the China is now basically becoming another US in so many aspects of the society. But it seems to be very hard to stop now. I can only hope that the European countries can preserve their democracy longer. I dunno.
What's evil about me wanting to live with people with whom I share cultural heritage, language, ethics and peculiarities of perception of life? What's wrong with having an independent sovereign government, with having laws and rules tailored specifically to this large tribe I belong to?
I have no desire for my nation to invade other countries or to impose our rules and ways of life on other people. That said, I also will not tolerate foreign interference in my nation's affairs, come it from a single country or international gang, such as UN.
Nations and nationalism are not evil, they are manifestations of different, unique ways of human development, manifestations of the very diversity Western leftists crave for.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Of course, Nietzsche wrote this before companies with "no I in team" and whatnot :P
> What's wrong with having an independent sovereign government
Nothing, but "nationalism" to me implies some sort identification with a symbol, rather than interacting with reality. Sufficiently developed individuals don't "belong to" groups, it's the other way around. Tribalism is a great method to stop that development dead in its tracks.
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
> The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality.
In so far that is the case for what you would consider nationalism, carry on. To me, a sense of responsibility towards the place where you live and towards the people that live there is just that, while nationalism adds more and only bad things to it. I generally see it used as crutch or excuse.
EDIT: Oh my that was a fast downvote, < 10 seconds. I wonder if a clever HN member has set a "thought police" style bot upon me. Sorry, I shall try harder to stick to the narrative.
Hobbes's Leviathan is China. Because Hobbes lived through a very tumultuous period of strife and conflict what he optimised for is stability and peace and prosperity at the expense of individual freedoms like the ability to choose one's destiny through either representative democracy or direct democracy.
If the lives of the vast majority of Chinese are improving, who is to say their system is morally wrong?
In fairness, the West only has itself to blame. Nobody with an honest heart can look at the post-colonial period and say that the West has not meddled in the affairs of other sovereign states. Also, many of the West's so-called republics and democracies are very hollow and corrupt often veering towards plutocracy, the system of law and political legislation is controlled by money and so corporate lobbying and eventually even political capture by corporations is rife. Workers rights are trampled at home and abroad though international agreements. Corporations evade paying taxes, they pollute the environment, collective bargaining is seen as a communist horror rather a democratic good.
The West is in no position to point fingers. That's what gets my goat up. Who the fuck do we think we are that we can tell others how to run their lives. What fucking gall. After all we've done? And we wonder why others respond indignantly and with contempt. I don't blame them. Get your own house in order first as Peterson says.
No, the correct response the Xi's power grab is not a suicidal arms race or political pressure. The correct response is to make the West an example others want to follow. We could start by taking back democracy by making citizen rule more direct so that people feel empowered. Let's move to the Swiss model. Let's reform the courts so that everybody has a fair chance, not the just the wealthy–it does not matter a whit if everybody is equal before the eyes of the law in theory if in practice they are not. We need to counter the evil of nationalism. We need to be sympathetic towards migrants. We need better separation of powers and we need to reject all forms of fundamentalism. Identity politics is a side-show, the arc of history is clear. Most importantly I think is that we need to place real limits on social media companies and we have to dismantle global surveillance, this is an evil so large it boggles the mind. We have to figure out how to combat rising economic inequality! We really do.
They built Leviathan, we built the Panopticon.
I recognise the freedoms we do have, such as my ability to criticise the system without repercussion, though if you agitate too much various agencies may open up a file on you.